Stop iPad Screen from Dimming or Locking Automatically

The iPad screen defaults to automatically dim itself and then turn itself off to black after a fairly short amount of time of inactivity. That’s great for preserving battery life of iOS devices, but if you’re like me you keep an iPad or iPhone alongside you full time while working as a control panel for Pandora, podcasts, and email, and having the screen lock after a few minutes of inactivity is annoying.

Fortunately you can adjust the amount of time it takes for the display of iPad to dim and lock itself.

How to Stop iPad Screen Dimming and Locking Itself Automatically

Here’s how to prevent the iPad (or iPhone or iPod) screen from dimming and auto-locking:

Open “Settings” app

Choose “Display & Brightness”

Tap “Auto-Lock” and choose “Never” as the option for auto-locking the screen

Close out of Settings, and now when you leave the iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch screen alone it won’t automatically lock itself or even dim.

This feature exists on all iPad devices, regardless of how new or old they are.

On older versions of iOS you can also make the adjustment in Settings > General > Auto-Lock > Never

A caveat to remember is this will always be in effect, meaning you will have to lock the screen yourself using the top power button when you do want the screen to go dark. That’s especially important for when you’re on the go, if not to prevent battery drain than to help protect your personal data in case you happened to lose the device (don’t forget to use a strong passcode too).

Perhaps in an ideal world, there would be different power management settings for auto-locking for if a device was plugged in and if a device was on battery, but iOS does not have that feature yet.

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Oh wow such important. the only way this is useful is it doesn’t waste the battery by turning off the screen. when you spend years typing in a password that never gets used in any practical sense then you eventually will want to turn it off. when did you hop on the apple technophile band wagon?

Why doesn’t iOS have power management settings to auto lock when on battery and stay on while plugged in? Windows has had that option for decades. I love apple devices but there some basic things they just drop the ball in. Thanks, Tim

For all those, who can’t find the “never” option. You’re most likely using a company iPad. The company can apply security profiles to your iPad. They can (and mostly do) hide the longer auto-lock settings and also enforce you to use a stronger password than the 4 number code.

This unfortunately doesn’t work with the new IOS upgrade – I have 3 iPads running Staff/Guest sign in and have the units dimming and going off – I’ve changed the setting to disable as advised above and this doesn’t do anything – units still dimming and turning off.
Is there an application that can be downloaded and prevent this occurring. (Apple aren’t helping).

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